IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q1 2022 - 7

Interview
An Interview with Professor Sanjit K. Mitra
I
n December of 2021, the Associate
Editors of the IEEE Circuits and
Systems Magazine (IEEE CAS-M),
Nele Mentens and Fan Chen had a
great chance to interview Professor
Sanjit Kumar Mitra. In this interview,
Professor Mitra shared with our
CAS readers his brilliant career and
colorful life, his insights into learning
and education, and his inspiring
suggestions for young researchers.
This interview article sorted out a
total of six questions. We hope our
CAS readers will enjoy reading this
article-Thank You!
Biography
Sanjit K. Mitra is a Professor Emeritus of Electrical &
Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa
Barbara. Dr. Mitra has served IEEE in various capacities
including service as the President of the IEEE Circuits &
Systems Society in 1986 and has held visiting appointments
in Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, India,
Japan, Norway, Singapore and the United Kingdom. He
has received a number of awards from ASEE, IEE (London),
IEEE, IEEE Circuits & Systems Society, IEEE Signal
Processing Society and European Association for
Signal Processing. He is a member of the U.S. National
Academy of Engineering, a member of the Norwegian
Academy of Technological Sciences, an Academician
of the Academy of Finland (appointed by the President
of Finland), a foreign member of the Finnish Academy
of Sciences and Arts, a foreign member of the Croatian
Academy of Sciences and Arts, Croatian Academy of
Engineering, and the Academy of Engineering, Mexico,
Brazilian Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Fellow
of the National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian
National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Mitra is a Life
Fellow of the IEEE.
Question 1: You have done tremendous
pioneer work in the area of analog
and digital signal processing, and
image processing such as waveletbased
image fusion and multiresolution
image representation. Could
you share any issues or obstacles
you faced as an academic faculty? Do
you have any suggestions for earlycareer
faculty?
Prof. Mitra: At the University of
California, Davis, the teaching load of
all faculty members was very high as
each one was teaching five courses
in three quarter long terms. I found
it very difficult to have such a high
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCAS.2022.3142668
Date of current version: 24 February 2022
FIRST QUARTER 2022
teaching load with a large number of graduate students
who were carrying out their research for their Master's
and PhD theses under my supervision. In addition, I
was very much interested in teaching courses that were
more relevant to our students when most of them join
companies as engineers after graduation. To find out
what kind of work was being carried out at electronics
companies in the Bay Area, I used to visit them on my
day off from teaching and discovered that most engineers
were involved in the design of both analog and
digital electronic circuits using commercial integrated
circuits. I mentioned this fact to the chair of the department
and at his suggestion I developed a course on analog
and digital electronic circuits to replace the required
upper division electronic course that was being taught
covering semiconductor physics along with the design
of analog circuits containing diodes and vacuum tubes.
Unfortunately, there were no such books in the market
at that time and I ended up writing a book entitled " An
Introduction to Digital and Analog Integrated Circuits "
(Harper & Row, 1970). I was also involved changing the
accompanying laboratory course which consisted of a
manual. The students were following the instructions
given in the manual and just took measurements they
were being asked and did not know how to write a good
laboratory report. I developed a laboratory course with
each experiment divided into a set of smaller parts and
IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
7
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